Boiler Problems

    As I gazed out ofthe large bay window overlooking the meadows of Rulshire, I was struck with a peculiar sense of dread. On any other day, dread would be a rather inappropriate response to the pleasant coat of freshly fallen snow that had rested on the fields and the surrounding properties. Divorced from its context, it was a picturesque view that was only a light dusting of cheap glitter away from being a Hallmark Christmas card. And yet, as my forlorn eyes scanned the white-dusted hills of Rulshire, a heaviness pulled my heart towards my stomach. Shit, I thought to myself. It worked.
    "Well I've never seen anything like it," Joan Mathers stammered half-joyfully, taking a sip of tea. "It was perfectly warm on the walk over. I didn't even bring my coat!" She nestled herself into the worn fabric of the antique chair that she had always insisted on sitting in despite its rigid cushions.
    "Yes it does seem odd, doesn't it?" I said. "The weather around here has never been predictable, but a snow storm in the middle of June..." I paused and swallowed my nerves, trying not to stare out of the window too long. "Unheard of," I finished reluctantly. I returned my attention to Joan and took a gulp of my own tea. The unexpected visit from my landlady hadn't exactly helped the situation, but at this point I had resigned myself to the circumstances and decided to roll with the punches. I nervously played around with the small plate  I'd hurriedly prepared and gingerly picked up a custard cream. That's normal, I thought. Normal people eat custard creams in normal situations. It was something, at least. "So what brings you over, Joan?" I said with a mouthful of biscuit.
    Joan's aged face screwed up slightly, unimpressed with the fountain of crumbs that left my mouth as I spoke. "Oh, please don't worry," she reassured me. "It's nothing major. Just a few noise complaints from the neighbours."
    I paused chewing for a moment and thought back over the past few weeks, formulating a believable excuse. "Noise complaints?" I asked, stalling for time.
    Joan took another sip of her tea and smiled a particular type of smile. The kind of smile that told me she knew I felt guilty, but that she was going to play along with my bullshit anyway. "Yes, nothing to get a warning over or anything. I just thought I better come over and ask you to keep it down."
    "Right, of course. We've had a few friends popping in and out recently, I'm sure it's them. I'll be sure to tell them next time."It was a challenge to keep my mind on the conversation. The view from outside the bay window was pulling me over to look at it, to satiate the dread.
    "Wonderful. I'm ever so sorry, I don't want you to feel as though I'm spoiling your fun." She had fully settled into her chair now,telling me she had no intention of leaving any time soon. "I know you young lads get up to all sorts with your music and computers, but you know how it is with the Edwards' and their new baby. Silence is golden and all that."
    "Yes, of course Mrs. Mathers. We'll tone it down a little." I caught a glimpse of the fairy-tale winter wonderland that was elegantly unfolding before the window and silently urged it to go fuck itself. "Just curious, what exactly have they been hearing ?I'd feel dreadful if we've been keeping everyone up with our music."
    "I'm not sure its music exactly," Joan said as she ran through the complaints in her head. "Georgina mentioned something about chanting, she said it might have been a drinking game."
    Clearly the word 'drinking game' was foreign to her. The jammy dodger she'd picked up ten minutes ago remained uneaten in her hand; I was in this for the long-haul. The mention of chanting unsettled me and I skimmed the events of the past few weeks, desperately hoping that they hadn't heard what, exactly, we were chanting."Either way," she diverted, "just be sure to quiet down in the evenings. Sturdy as they are, these walls are fairly thin."
    "Will do, not to worry," I replied, relieved that she had dropped the subject as soon as she did. I stood up to see her off and only then did she take the first bite of her biscuit. I sat back down and admitted defeat, patiently waiting for her to say the words 'So how's the...'
    "So how's the dog back home?"
    "Well, Joan, he's been better," I sighed. "He's getting on a bit now. He's not ill or anything, just older you know?"
    She laughed and her whole body jiggled, the very picture of joy. "That's wonderful to hear. Your mother had stopped bringing him down on her visits so I'd begun to fear the worst." The jammy dodger situation was on two bites out of a possible four. The mention of my mother almost always signalled another twenty minutes of this at a conservative guess. "Oh, and how is Margaret these days?" she continued.
    As I settled in to my equally uncomfortable chair, far less acquainted with its frankly abysmal cushioning than she was, a polite knock came from the living room door. For a moment, I was relieved,but that gorgeous shimmering stretch of lightly falling snow killed me inside.
    Simon shyly poked his head through the door and greeted Joan with a small nod and a smile. He then turned to me, retaining his smile, and said "Sorry, there's a problem. You know, with the boiler?"
    Joan's faced darted towards Simon. "There's a problem with the boiler?" she said anxiously. "Why didn't you let me know sooner? I could have that fixed up in no time." She began to stand up to investigate, hands and fingers at the ready to call the plumber.
    I quickly urged her to sit down. "No, no, please. It's nothing,really. Simon just doesn't fully understand how it works."
    "Yeah," Simon laughed. "Snow's pouring in and Larry knows howto turn the heating on." His head retreated into the other room and I lept from my chair.
    "Just a moment, Mrs. Mathers," I said before rushing out towards Simon in the hallway.
    Simon had already gone upstairs to the room. I wasn't fond of how I'd taken to calling it 'the room', but calling it 'a room'or 'the bedroom' masked it with a familiarity that I just wasn't comfortable with, as though I was lying to myself that it was just another room in the house. I hurried up the stairs and quickly paced towards the room,trying to keep an ear out in case Joan had decided to get up and go for a little wander. She had about two bites left of her biscuit; we were safe for ten minutes or so.
    Simon was rifling through the room, picking everything up and checking both the underside of the objects and the surface it had been lifted from. It took a moment until I noticed the 'boiler problem', as he had put it. In the center of the room, in the middle of the complex array of geometric shapes we had drawn with powdered animal horns, was a box that had been destroyed, seemingly blown open from the inside.
    "Are you serious?!" I screeched with a whisper. "Where is it?"
    "Look, man, I don't know," Simon replied in between anxious breaths. "I was writing in the book and I dropped my pen. It fell onto the powder and the box just blew open," he explained,mimicking an explosion with flailing hands. "It has to be in here, but it's big... or rather, small but... so small it's big and, well,you get it."
    I did. I hated that I got it, but I did. I said nothing and began to help him search the room. His robes fluttered about and rustled with his frantic movements, and the second issue became apparent.
    "Simon," I growled. "Why the hell are you wearing that?"
    He glanced down and looked confused, and then he jolted with the realisation.
    "Shit! Sorry!" he said, grabbing the robes at his chest as if to hide them. "I mean, it's fine, it doesn't really look like cult gear. If she saw me, she probably would have thought it was a dressing gown or something."
    I hasten to add that I was the only one in the group that was passionately opposed to calling it 'cult gear'. It began as a sort of joke. The robes required for the rituals certainly fitted a certain stereotype, but for me the joke got old fast. After a time, though,the group's insistence on the 'cult gear' descriptor became increasingly accurate. Much like 'the room', avoiding calling the robes anything else was self-deception.
    "Whatever," I snarled. "It's fine, let's just find that thing before everything else goes to shit. The ash is already falling.Everyone else seems to think its snow, we're safe for now."
    It's at this point that I'd like to turn your attention to the beginning of this story. You might remember that I used the phrase "It worked." Typically, it's a phrase used in happiness: "My car was making odd noises so I changed the oil and it worked," you might say. The issue, and there was very much an issue here, was that my"it worked" was in reference to an ancient ritual we had carried out the previous night.
    It's here that I'll draw your attention to my use of the word "shit",preceding the phrase "it worked." As in pure, straight-faced,worry-filled "Shit, it worked," as opposed to "Shit. It worked!" Indeed, a certain type of person that found themselves in my position might say "it worked" with the same sort of optimism and sense of achievement as the man that fixed his car. "We conducted an ancient ritual and now ash is falling from the sky. It worked!"
    Simon and I are demonstrably not that kind of person and generally weren't too fond of the idea that we had ushered in what the tomes had referred to as the "reawakening."Exactly what we had reawakened was once safely locked in a box of lead, as specifically requested by the tomes. Now that very same box of lead was burst open right in the middle of our broken sealing charm. (The powdered animal horns, by the way, weren't required. The tomes asked for chalk, Simon just thought that would be "an interesting, quirky twist.")
    So there we were, up to our ankles in goat's blood and powered animal horns frantically searching the room for something that deserved the honour of being 'reawakened', and Joan Mathers likely only had one bite of her jammy dodger left before she would start to make her way upstairs to sort out our boiler problem.